Prospective buyers in a Townsville housing development are insuring against rising electricity prices by ticking the option for houses with solar and battery energy storage.

Distributor 360Energy is supplying Tesla Powerwall 2 batteries into the 800-home Harris Crossing development and says most of the 17 dwellings built to date have included the clean energy option of 5.4kW of solar PV paired with a Powerwall 2 storage system capable of supplying 13kWh.

360Energy sales and marketing manager Doug Meldrum (left), with the Tesla Powerall 2 and SolarEdge system available as an option to buyers at the Harris Crossing development.

“The vision is that buyers could have a home that was effectively future-proof and that had much lower running costs than other homes,” 360 Energy sales and marketing manager Doug Meldrum told EcoGeneration.

Meldrum says consumers are attracted by the security of blackout protection in a region which is hit by cyclones.

“[The system is] geared at generating significant energy for a modern home with air-conditioners and having a big enough battery that could continue to run those systems at night but also provide a good couple of days of redundancy in case of a cyclone and grid outage,” he said.

The Tesla unit is paired with a 5kW SolarEdge inverter, which allows for the addition of more solar panels and individual panel monitoring.

“We had to have roof surfaces designed to accommodate large solar arrays,” says Meldrum, who is working with local installer SuperGreen.

The Harris Crossing property project, by Maidment Developments, is one of the largest residential solar battery installations in Australia to date and the largest Powerwall 2 installation in Queensland.

Meldrum says most inquiries have focused on the long-term value in clean energy systems.

“We had very few questions on safety; it was more about how do these systems work and what does it do to my bill, and how long will it last.”